Petros
by The Laughing Phoenix
Summary: In a world where the Avengers are Wizards, Phil is their biggest support.


Petros

Summary: In a world where the Avengers are Wizards, Phil is their biggest support.

**The Laughing Phoenix** doesn't own the Avengers or Young Wizards. She's got a lovely set of the YW books, though.

* * *

"So, how'd it go?"

Clint groaned as he fell forward into the couch, just aware enough to give Phil a thumbs-up. Behind him Tony and Steve clanked through the door, Bruce supported between them. Settling Bruce into a chair, the two of them stretched a little, peeling off cowl and helmet thankfully. The physicist fussed only a little at being hefted around, rather used to it by now after a little over a year on the team.

"SHIELD has a partial report now," Phil went on, "but we'll need to sort out what will be going into the final reports, and what will be going elsewhere."

"I've got some ideas," Natasha said, leaning against the door, a battered black book tucked under her arm. "Tony, JARVIS, give me a hand here?" Holograms obligingly spun into being in front of her, and she leaned forward, tapping on them. "If you'll notice, the attacks we faced look similar at a casual glance to Doom's."

"That's not going to be good enough for SHIELD," Steve warned.

"I know. Fortunately for us, if you dig a little deeper they look more like AIM's work." Natasha highlighted a few points with a casual touch and spun them out to the center of the room.

"So it looks like AIM trying to blame Doom for an attack." Tony reached out to the side and a screen of rapidly scrolling text appeared. "I like it."

Clint yawned and dropped his head to the cushions, willing to let Natasha, Steve and Tony sort out the bulk of the story they planned to feed SHIELD. Normally he'd sit by, tossing comments and observations into the ring as the team put together its report, but this was different and he didn't have the talent for deception that those three did.

A weight dropped next to his head. "Come on," Phil said kindly, resting a hand on his shoulder. "You can do your other report now while those three are occupied."

Groaning, Clint clawed himself upright, reaching for the dog-eared paperback Phil had left. Opening the book to the relevant page, he cleared his mind and sorted out what he knew of the day's events, then began to enter them into his Manual. Across the room, Bruce was murmuring to himself as he flipped through the pages of an old lab notebook, and snatches of song from the kitchen told Clint that Thor was accessing his own Manual.

When Clint looked up again, Steve was sketching in his large notebook, Tony was murmuring to JARVIS, streams of Speech and code flying, and Natasha was nowhere to be found. "Finished with the report for SHIELD?" Clint asked, stretching stiffly.

"Mostly," Steve said absently. "We're just waiting on you and Thor to clarify a few points, and then we'll be good. JARVIS has the file waiting on your tablet."

"Thanks." Clint slipped off to his suite, taking the chance to peel out of his tac suit and shower before he dug back into paperwork. As he began skimming the report, scrubbing his hair with a towel in the left hand and his tablet in the right, he felt a sudden rush of gratitude for his team.

Wizards teamed up all the time for big projects, but by in large they were more solitary creatures, working alone or in pairs. That six of them worked as a unit was unusual, and Clint periodically wondered if it meant that New York was in particular trouble. Technically speaking they held their own territories in the greater city – Steve was nominally responsible for Brooklyn while Manhattan was Tony's turf, now that he was no longer living in Malibu. Bruce had claimed Harlem and the Bronx, a decision that had worried Clint a little, but the scientist seemed to be doing okay so he'd withheld judgment. As a general rule, however, the team operated as a single unit, covering the greater metropolitan area.

Flipping through the last of the report for SHIELD, Clint entered his observations where appropriate and suggested a few minor edits. Dropping the tablet, he threw on a shirt and headed to the communal kitchen to see what takeout Tony had ordered this time.

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

The mission was a clusterfuck from the word 'go'. What should have been a simple recon mission ending in the retrieval of some stolen files turned into a two-week course of cat-and-mouse. Complicating the situation was that unseasonably heavy rains were threatening landslides, and Clint had been one of three wizards close enough to respond when the local wizard, a sixty-something fellow who doted on his half-dozen grandchildren, called for backup. As a result, Clint spent the last thirty-six hours of the op running around the town, dodging armed goons, sneaking in and out of buildings, and slipping away periodically to hold up his end of the Wizardry.

Two days later, holed up in a safe house with Coulson, Clint stared blankly at his report, not sure what he could safely say. Normally he'd have lied out his ass, but Coulson had been there and seen enough that…well, if Clint wasn't handed over to SHIELD R&D when they got back, he'd be lucky.

"Barton." Clint tensed, hunching his shoulders. "Barton!"

"Yeah?" Despite his best efforts to the contrary, Clint flinched as Coulson sat down across the battered table, setting down his laptop.

"We need to compare notes on this op."

"Why?"

"Because I need to know what you feel safe putting in the report for SHIELD, and what will be going into your Manual."

Clint looked up at Coulson, searching his face. It didn't do him a whole lot of good, Coulson had that mild smile down to an art. "My what?"

"Your Manual," Coulson said calmly.

"Coulson, what the hell are you talking about?"

The smile never left Coulson's face. "Unless I'm very much mistaken, Barton, you spent half the mission on errantry." At whatever he saw on Clint's face, he elaborated. "You wouldn't be the first wizard I've met."

"But, you're not a wizard." Clint would know – he'd checked his manual when he joined SHIELD and the only wizards they had on payroll were on semi-permanent assignment to bases on the West coast.

"I'm not," Coulson agreed. "But I won't leave you without backup when you need it. That's not how I work." He smiled. "Now, shall we get this done?"

Clint stuck as close as he could to Coulson after that, and maybe it was a bit pathetic, but he'd never had anybody like Coulson in his life before and it was weirdly nice. Before too long SHIELD stopped sending Clint out with any other handler, and it was him and Coulson and they were _awesome_. For the first time in who knew how long, Clint had somebody he could trust with his Wizardry business.

Then came the mission to take out the Black Widow.

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

Phil settled in the kitchen as Thor finished whatever he was doing with his Manual, murmuring the last few strings of Speech sotto voce. The syllables sounded almost liquid in Thor's deep voice, like honey, and Phil marveled all over again at the sheer variety of Wizardly traditions. While the rest of his team had physical versions of their Manuals and were accustomed to hiding their presence, in Asgard the Manuals were purely oral and Wizardry considered simply another skill, albeit a rare one.

"Honorable Agent!" Thor grinned, holding out a carafe. "Would you care for coffee?"

"That'd be great, Thor, thanks." Thor beamed and poured Phil a mug. "Where is everybody?"

"Steven went for a run," Thor said, "but I have not seen the others this morn."

"Sir and Doctor Banner are in the labs," JARVIS said. "Agents Romanov and Barton are in the armory. Did you require them?"

"No, no, just curious, thank you JARVIS," Phil sipped his coffee. "I'm just here to check in before I head to HQ."

"Is there a mission for us?" Thor asked. His own mug of coffee looked tiny in his hands.

"Not yet, but there are a few developing situations we're keeping an eye on," he smiled faintly. "I'll let you know if that changes." Phil slid off the stool and put his mug in the dishwasher. "Thanks for the coffee, Thor."

Two hours later, the alarm blared in the Tower. The Avengers ran for the jet, Iron Man demanding updates from SHIELD and relaying them to the rest. "Situation on 5th," he said. "Some alien teleported out of nowhere and went on the attack."

Hawkeye slid into the pilot's chair, flipping the switches that would broadcast the channel through the jet. "- ooks to be after a target, but he's not discriminating." Sitwell was saying. "Anybody even remotely in his way, he cuts them down. We don't have any solid numbers, but at least a dozen people are badly injured and one may be dead."

"Anything else for us Agent Sitwell?" Captain America asked, tugging his cowl over his head.

"Where's Coulson?" Iron Man asked.

"That's just it. Coulson had gone out to get lunch, and wound up right in the middle of the attack. The guy's taking Coulson's interference personally."

Iron Man and Thor were on the alien before the rest of the team could hit the ground, but Agent Coulson was injured, down and bleeding in the street. Despite the attacks of the Avengers, the alien merely deflected or dodged their attacks, single-mindedly continuing his attack on Coulson.

"Take him alive if you can." Sitwell ordered.

Captain America's shield flew at the alien from its left, Iron Man's repulsors burned at its right, and Thor's hammer came crashing down on its head, laying it out. It fell, twitched, and did not stir.

"It alive?" the Captain asked.

Iron Man drifted forward, gauntlets still up. "Far as I can tell, yeah."

"Good work," Sitwell said happily. "Agents are moving in to collect the hostile. Romanoff, if you're interested in the interrogation we'd enjoy your company. I have medical teams in route, ETA three minutes."

"How's Coulson?" Hawkeye called.

Bruce had managed to remain Bruce, and was looking the agent over. "Not good. Couple of bad lacerations to the torso, defensive wounds to the hands and a big goose-egg to go with a concussion." He put a hand on the least-damaged part of Phil's chest, pinning him. "No, don't move."

Five minutes later the alien had been bundled into one of SHIELD's black vans, Thor riding along to make sure the prisoner didn't wake up suddenly. A team of EMTs was loading Coulson onto a stretcher under Bruce's supervision, and nobody objected when he hopped into the ambulance with him. By the time the agent was settled in medical, the alien was awake and in an interrogation room at the nonexistent mercies of the Black Widow and the rest of the Avengers had commandeered a conference room.

Armor standing quiet sentinel in the corner, Tony was calling up security cameras' images of the attack and assembling a timeline. Steve and Clint watched intently. "So our bad guy, and he was kinda lame compared to what we've been called out for in the past, don't you think, shows up here." He froze the frame. "Appears more or less out of nowhere, footage isn't good enough to see what he's using to teleport or whatever and it'll take me a couple of hours to enhance it, dear God this is crappy resolution. Anyway, he shows up," Tony made a tugging motion, and two more windows superimposed themselves on the old one, showing new angles. "And starts just cutting through people with, what even is that, some sort of bizarre spear? He's headed in one direction, just ignoring everybody else around him, and here," he paused the footage again, "is where Agent starts fighting back." Tony let the footage play, showing the flight of the bystanders, Coulson's battle, his fall, and the Avenger's arrival. "And there you have it, folks."

"Play it again?" Steve leaned forward, narrowing his eyes. "From where he first appears to where we show up." Silently Tony backed up the feeds and let them run out again. Steve sat back in his chair. "Am I the only one…"

"No," Clint said hoarsely. "I see it too."

Tony frowned and glanced back and forth a bit, tracking trajectories across the screen. "He's after Agent?"

"Who's after Agent?" Bruce asked, slipping into the room, Thor behind him carrying a tray of coffees.

"It looks like our bad guy was targeting Agent Agent," Tony said, playing the sequence again for the benefit of the others. "How is he?"

"Being stitched up right now." Bruce settled into his chair and leaned on the table. "None of the lacerations were serious and he didn't lose too much blood, but medical wants to keep him overnight to monitor that concussion and he'll be out of the field for at least a month. I left right around the time they started threatening him with bed rest."

Thor shook his head. "It is a grievous shame that you humans do not heal as we Asgardians do," he said regretfully. "It is a pity when a warrior as talented as the Son of Coul must remain out of combat."

"Yeah, well, we're not as durable as you, big guy." Tony selected a few of the camera feeds. "JARVIS, see that our favorite Russian assassin gets these will you?"

"While we're waiting for Black Widow to finish up," Steve said, "any issues anybody wants to raise?"

Twenty minutes later, Natasha stalked into the room. Clint edged sideways slightly – nothing good every came from that glass-smooth look on her face. "His target was Agent Coulson," Natasha said a little too calmly. "Further questioning before the assassin committed suicide suggests that it has something to do with Wizardry."

"Phil's not a wizard, though, and I didn't think he'd be a target just because he knows about it." Bruce fiddled with his glasses. "How- how long has he known about wizards and Wizardry and" his hands traced a circle in the air "everything?"

Natasha shook her head and Clint shrugged. "He's never said," Clint told the team. "He knew about it long before we met, figured out that I was one pretty quick, but all he's ever said is that he knew a wizard when he was young."

"This makes no sense," Tony snapped, irritated. "Phil's kickass and all, but he's not a wizard, for fuck's sake he can only understand basic Speech and his accent in it is terrible." Thor nudged a mug of coffee in Tony's direction. They'd all learned by now that being worried about people made Tony irritable. "If this has to do with Wizardry, why'd they go after the one non-wizard on the team?"

"You think this was an attempt to get to us?" Steve asked, but Natasha was already shaking her head.

"Coulson was the primary target, the rest of us were considered incidental. The assassin was very, very clear on that point. Someone out there wants him dead, and badly." She hesitated, then went on. "We managed to get a name out of him. SHIELD is running down what references they can right now, but does 'Thanos' mean anything to any of you?"

Thor crushed his coffee cup. "Thanos," he said slowly, "is a figure of legend on Asgard. He was one of the last Titans. When my father was young, Thanos attacked the Nine Realms. He was eventually defeated, stripped of the bulk of his power and flung into the void, but at the cost of many lives, including two of my uncles. We believed the Titan gone."

"Doesn't sound like he's gone." Clint muttered.

Thor nodded. "There have been rumblings of late…" he trailed off, then shook his shaggy head. "In truth, there is one being who might have insight into this matter, but under current circumstances it may not be wise to approach them."

"There are assassins after Coulson." Natasha said bluntly. "I doubt this is the only one, and we're flying blind. We need information."

"Why wouldn't it be wise?" Steve asked.

Thor hesitated. "Loki has made a study of the obscurer aspects of our history and has perhaps a better understanding of wizardry than most."

"No." Clint shook his head. "Hell no. Fuck no."

"I'm with bird-brain on this one." Tony said. "No way in hell."

"I thought Loki wasn't a wizard." Bruce said.

"He is not," Thor explained, "his magic is entirely of a different variety than ours. But he has never enjoyed being ignorant of any subject. When I passed my Ordeal, he threw himself into the study of Wizardry, and many a time understood as much or more about it as I."

"We'll keep Loki in reserve as an option." Steve said firmly. Tony and Clint made noises of protest, but Steve overrode them. "We need to know why they're after Phil. Ideally we'll be able to find someone closer who has some answers, but if all else fails we'll see what Loki has to say."

Luck was against them. Most of the Seniors in the Americas and Europe were busy, elbow-deep in extensive or delicate projects. Those they could contact had very little information to give. In the end, even Tony had to agree that Loki was the only option left.

In the end, it was Thor, Natasha, Bruce and Tony who made the trip to the Asgardian cells Loki had been imprisoned in. Clint and Steve were staying behind to keep an eye on Phil and maintain an Avengers presence, but Tony had rigged up a Wizardly camera feed and they sat around the kitchen table, watching. Phil was still in Medical, doing paperwork and intimidating Junior Agents.

"Good morrow, _brother_," Loki murmured. "What brings you to my humble abode?"

"Loki," Thor said heavily. "We have questions, if you would answer them."

"But of course," Loki settled back into a chair and gestured elegantly. "I am at your complete disposal."

"The Son of Coul has come under attack," Thor explained. "The assassins claim they have been sent by Thanos." Loki flinched, and Clint leaned forward, staring at the feed. "We would be grateful for whatever information you can give us, brother."

Loki leaned back into his chair for a long minute, fingers steepled. "The All-Father would have more information than I on the history of the Titan. For the present," he shrugged. "I am hardly the only being to have survived the Void."

"So Thanos is hanging out in the spaces between the worlds," Tony said. Loki flinched again at the name. "Doesn't explain what his interest in Earth is."

"The Titan has one purpose. He is devoted to a being he calls Death," Loki gave a death's-head smile. "You will know her by many other names."

Steve let out a slow breath. "Did Loki just say that Thanos is working for the Lone Power?" Outside Loki's cell, Bruce asked the same question.

"Nothing so pedestrian. He is in love. All that he does is to bring honor and gifts to his beloved, additions to her dowry."

"That is fucked up." Clint muttered. Steve nodded.

"So why would he be interested in a human?" Natasha asked. "Coulson's not a wizard."

"As I'm unfamiliar with Agent Coulson, I'm afraid I do not know." Loki waved a hand dismissively.

"This guy." Tony held out his phone, a hologram of Coulson floating above the screen. "You may recognize him as the guy who shot you with a big-ass gun the last time you were on Earth."

Loki leaned forward, took a long look at the image, then began to laugh.

"Brother," Thor stepped towards the glass when it looked like Loki had no interest in stopping, "brother, explain yourself!"

"Oh, this is too grand," Loki exclaimed, eyes fever-bright and smile more than a little mad. "You stand with one of the greatest supports you could _dream_ of in your midst, and you do not recognize it." He leaned forward, eyeing the image of Phil like a hungry cat eyes a bird that perches just beyond the window-glass. "No wonder _He_ wants him destroyed so badly."

Clint glanced at Steve, wondering if the Captain was as confused as he was, but was distracted by dual _bangs_ as Tony and Bruce slammed away from the cell and out the door.

"Ah," Loki murmured, eyes glittering. "They begin to understand."

When Clint caught up to the resident scientists half an hour later, they were standing around an empty lab bench, exhaustion writ large on their faces. Bruce's fingers were clenched in his hair, and Tony's hand was white-knuckled around a highball glass. "So, wanna explain that for the rest of us?" Clint asked, deliberately casual. "You know, with small words and all?"

Tony pushed back from the bench. "Get Thor, Steve, and Natasha down here, we're going to the sub-basement. I only want to say this once." Clint nodded and turned away, but stopped at Tony's hand on his arm. "Barton, for the love of God, don't let Coulson know."

Five minutes later the team was standing in a solid concrete box below Avengers Tower. "Thick enough to withstand a bomb," Tony said absently. "Minimal tech, so we can't be overheard, and JARVIS? JARVIS, be a good boy and make sure that we don't exist for the next twenty minutes or so. Leave the Manual entry, you know the one."

A short passage projected itself against the wall, and Clint twitched involuntarily as the room went silent, the omnipresent sound of electronics dying away except for the faintest whisper of the projector. Tony waved once at the wall, and the team obediently turned to look.

_Abdal (Pillar)_

_This category of created being is independent of wizard status but still included in it due to the sharing of various functions and qualities across species and eschatological barriers. The sobriquet "pillars" refers to the immense supportive strength inherent in these creatures wherever they appear. The physical and spiritual structure of the Universe and its contents is strengthened against the assaults of evil by the Pillars' presence, and weakened by their loss. While they may occasionally also be wizards, abdals display no unusual aptitude for the Art: their value lies elsewhere. Their status comes from direct endowment by the__One. Their power is derived strictly from the incorrupt nature of their personalities. Some abdals have unusual abilities of perception reaching into other universes, while still seeing the entire physical world as mirage. Some have sufficient control over their physical natures to change their bodies at will, without recourse to normal wizardry, or travel great distances, or appear in two places at the same time._

_The Pillars are rarely recognized as such by their contemporaries. Should they become conscious of their own status as abdals, the realization itself renders them ineffective in their role, which is to channel the One's power without obstruction into the strengthening of the world. Their portion of that power is then lost to the Worlds, and with its loss, the abdal dies.*_

There was a long, painful moment of silence. It was Steve who finally broke it. "Fuck."

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

Black Widow was a legend in their world. The terrifying, nigh-unstoppable spy and assassin, the woman who was trained from childhood by the Soviets and eventually turned on them, destroying their intelligence programs and setting them back decades. A mystery wrapped in an enigma, even SHIELD's impressive resources could turn up little about her. Nobody was even sure how many Black Widows there had been over the years, although given her presumed fifty to sixty years in espionage the usual assumption was that the name was an inherited one, passed down from operative to operative.

Clint and Coulson were being sent to kill her. Intelligence placed her in Prague, and on the flight over Coulson handed Clint two files. The larger was perhaps two inches thick, the slimmer held maybe five pages. "The first," Coulson said, lacing his fingers together, "is everything SHIELD has on the Black Widow. The second," he nodded at the slimmer of the two, "is everything on the Black Widow we can independently verify."

"And they're sending me?" Clint asked, ignoring the fatter folder entirely.

Coulson shrugged. "It's possible that this is a waste of time," he admitted. "Our intelligence may be bad, or she may have moved on already."

"But you don't think so?"

"We don't think so. More to the point, we can't afford to leave her loose."

For all the importance of their target, the op started like any other assassination Clint had ever done. And then Clint was perched on the roof of the Rudolfinium, tucked behind a stone knight and staring down at the beautiful redhead standing in the crosshairs of his scope.

"Do you have the shot?"

"Yeah."

"Take it."

"Something's not right, boss."

"Have you been compromised?"

"No, but there's something off about this."

"Orders from on high, agent. Take the shot."

But Clint was breaking down his rifle and stuffing it into its case. "Negative, sir, I need to get down there."

"Agent!"

Clint ripped the comm from his ear and stashed it with his weapon, then scaled down the wall. The Widow caught his eye and faded into the crowd and he had to hurry to keep up as she led him through the narrow back alleys of the city. He nearly lost her twice, and when he finally caught up to her it was at Vítkov Hill, over a mile away.

"If you were hoping to kill me," she said, in perfect English without a hint of accent, "you missed your opportunity. I don't allow second tries."

"I wasn't trying to kill you."

She raised an eyebrow. "No? Then what were you doing up on the roof with a sniper rifle? Admiring the view?"

Clint has to give her that. "I don't think you were there by accident. I think you wanted to die." She didn't respond, so he soldiered on, hoping he wasn't about to get himself killed. "I don't think you need to though, there are other options."

She laughed. "I am not a fool. You will take me to your superiors and I will spend the rest of my days in a cell divulging all I have ever known."

"That's not what'll happen." Clint tried not to show his frustration. It might go that way, yes, but it didn't have to and he had no idea how to prove it to her.

She shook her head. "_Optimist_" she murmured, and Clint smiled despite himself, because he now had a way to make her believe him.

"_Maybe_," he said, responding in the same liquid syllables of the Speech. "_I am on errantry, and I greet you._"

Two hours and an extensive conversation in the Speech later, the Black Widow was tentatively agreeing to come in to SHIELD. Grinning like a loon, Clint sketched out the simple tracking spell he kept on reserve, glancing at the name to double-check that Coulson's name was still in the space for 'subject'.

Widow studied the name. "This is your handler?"

"Yup."

"You trust him?"

"_With my life_," Clint replied, dropping back into the Speech. "_He knows, by the way._"

"SHIELD makes it a habit to employ wizards?"

"Nope. As far as I know, there are three others. You'd make number five." Clint shrugged. "Coulson knows, though, and he's safe."

It took a lot of fast talking when they met up with Coulson, ice-cold with rage, but six months later Coulson, Barton, and Romanov were in the field and if he'd thought things were awesome, this was brilliant.

When the Avengers came together, after the hell that had been the Chitauri and the major healing he and Natasha had needed to perform on Phil, Clint would later wonder how the senior agent kept drawing wizards into his orbit. He never quite managed to ask.

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

"It's not that I don't appreciate the gesture," Phil said calmly, standing in the middle of the room in his shirtsleeves. "But I'm not entirely sure it's necessary."

Natasha glared at him from where she stood at the edge of the circle of tightly scribed Speech, consulting with Clint about some more finicky aspect of the working. "It's necessary," she told him. "Don't argue with me."

Phil gave them that tolerant smile and settled, folding his hands in front of him. Outside of the circle, the rest of the team was going over Phil's suit jackets and a set of body armor, more sets of Speech being worked into the fabrics and ceramics.

"We're ready over here," Clint called, and the team surrounded Phil. At Steve's nod they began reciting in unison, the spell rising between them before shooting inward to sink into Phil's skin. When they finished Clint and Natasha stepped forward, each taking one of Phil's arms and examining them. Faint lines of silver gleamed briefly against his skin before fading away entirely.

"It worked." Natasha said, and some of the tension went out of the group.

"Great." Tony huffed. "Great, excellent, come on guys let's finish the jackets and armor now since we've got them here."

Natasha joined the retreat to the table laden with clothes, but Clint lingered, hovering near his handler and friend. The spell they'd just performed would let them know if Phil was in distress or under attack, and the ones on the clothes would reinforce them, cause them to resist kinetic energy, but he didn't know if it would be enough. Hell, Tony had JARVIS, half wizard, half Manual himself, devoting subroutines to constantly monitoring Phil, and it still felt like a stopgap.

You could protect someone from physical attacks. Protecting someone from knowledge…that was harder.

They'd tried. They'd tried very, very hard. They'd kicked around the idea of a sort of energy field that would destroy or corrupt any reference to abdals within a twenty-foot radius of Phil. At one point, when they were all exhausted and a bit heartsick, someone had suggested scrambling something inside Phil's brain, so that he'd be incapable of registering, let alone understanding, any reference, written, verbal, or other, to abdals. The first had been abandoned as impractical. The second as abhorrent and an unacceptable risk. Phil had been in the intelligence business for long enough to know when he was missing something important, and if they altered his mind in any way…he'd never forgive them, never trust them again, and that was terrible to contemplate.

So they were stuck. Clint didn't doubt that Tony at least would keep looking, and likely Bruce as well, but there didn't seem to be a way around it. JARVIS had volunteered to ensure that Phil never came across the concept via electronics, but that still left verbal communication or non-digital writings. Phil was uniquely vulnerable, and they didn't have a way to watch his back.

"Hey," Phil smiled at Clint. "It's fine. You've layered enough spells on me by now that anything coming after me is never going to get close."

Clint nodded, throat closing. Phil was in more danger than he could ever suspect, and all any of them could do was try. Wizardry couldn't fix everything, they knew and accepted that, but it always burned. "Yeah." It'd be enough. It'd have to be.

* * *

Written for my lovely **Rusting Roses** for her birthday. Sorry it's late, darling.

Thanks to **teacup_of_doom** for the beta.

*taken directly from A Wizard Alone


End file.
